Why Google’s changes could take $15b more from marketers
In this guest post, Beau Curtis breaks down how Google’s Penguin algorithm will affect your brand’s reach and what marketers can do about it.
They say the best place to hide a body is on page two of Google. That demonstrates just how unlikely users are to scroll past the page-fold, let alone make the massive effort to click to page two.
Over the past six months, it has become increasingly clear that Google is intent on maximizing its extraction of brand marketing budgets by pushing organic results further down the page.
It’s a tactic already successfully employed across a variety of digital platforms – get advertisers and publishers comfortable then change the ecosystem to make it increasingly difficult to reach the audience without paying for the privilege.
Great summary Beau! In isolation some of these changes don’t seem significant but all combined has reshaped SERPs considerably.
I would question the point about Extended Text Ads doubling real-estate. Although total character counts have increased, actual lines of text is the same. Considering lines of text is the main factor in SERP real-estate (as it pushes other results down the page) you could argue it hasn’t changed.
Hi Marc. Thanks for the feedback, and fair point about the Extended Text Ads. What I would say though, is that since I originally wrote this piece there have been even more changes which indicate the same focus on paid results over organic. The testing of “Posts with Google” is an interesting one and looks like an attempt at a content play – a-la Facebook Canvas etc.
I think the key thing is that, regardless of the platform, publishers (and make no mistake, that’s what Google have become) have become adept at managing their audiences to maximise their potential revenue.
Yeah definitely, couldn’t agree more. Google is pumping more and more widgets into the SERPs to drop down organic results and keep paid ads prominent.
Wasn’t aware of “posts with Google” but reading into it looks like definite content creation.